Earnest Testimonies

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, Cal. · May 6, 1875

Earnest Testimonies.

Mr. Moody, at one of his meetings in Glasgow, turned to Matt. 17:1–9, and after reading the account of the transfiguration, observed: “Luke says, ‘Peter and they that were with him were heavy with sleep.’ Asleep while Jesus was transfigured before them! Jesus in a glorified state, and they asleep so near the glory! This is a striking picture of the church of Christ in the present day. We are near the glory. No one can read the prophecies of Scripture with their eyes open and fail to perceive that the second coming of Christ and the glory of the millennium are near at hand; and yet those who ought to be watching are asleep.”

Rev. F. Whitefield, M. A., in an address before the London Prophetical Conference last May, said: “The grand thought before us is—the Lord is coming. Are we living in the blessed hope? Are we putting off everything that will not bear the searching character of that day? Oh, it will try us—all of us! It will try our hearts, try our principles, try all within us and all without us. It will bring a blush on thousands of faces, even of God's own children! It will make many an important thing now lighter than the small dust of the balance! Oh, that day, that day! How it will make everything now in each one's history fall into its right place, if only we bring it into everything! May each member of the church of Christ do this more and more, ‘as we see the day approaching.’”

Dr. Horatius Bonar is the author of these remarks: “The church's pilgrimage is nearly done, yet she is not less a pilgrim as its end draws nigh. Nay more so. The last stage of the journey is the dreariest for her. Her path lies through the thickest darkness that the world has yet felt. It seems as if it were only by the fitful blaze of conflagrations that we can now shape our way. It is the sound of falling kingdoms that is guiding us onward. It is the fragments of broken thrones lying across our pathway that assure us that our route is the true one, and that its end is near—that end, the morning with its songs; and in that morning, a kingdom; and in that kingdom, glory; and in that glory, the everlasting rest—the Sabbath of eternity.”—Messiah's Herald.